THE UNIVERSE KNOWS WHAT’S GOING DOWN
“So. You said you don’t believe in God.”
Nope. I don’t believe in a long-haired Dude sitting up there knowing everything, judging everybody, picking at his penis. I mean, if there are gods, He/She/It/They say, “You’re born weak and broken, but if you don’t shape up and do everything We say Our way, we’re gonna kick you around your entire life, and you’ll burn in Hell forevermore after you die.”
That presents two problems. God didn’t know enough to make us right, or if he left something out, he really shouldn’t punish us for not fixing it ourselves.
“Kinda like a manufacturer’s warranty.”
Except there’s no return. There’s no repair shop. There’s no frigging manual, and it’s very badly designed, this body of ours. We’re basically piss and shit machines. And like any idiot engineer, he runs the sewer system right through the pleasure park.
Which brings us to the Gnostics. They believe we’re ruled by an insane god, named Samuel. Insane Samuel. And there’s a smarter, kinder, more gentle compassionate god above him. Who wants to help us. But of course, being further up the chain of command he can’t very well let Samuel know he’s not doing a good job. So he sent the Snake to the Garden of Eden, to tell us the truth. We need to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Of good AND evil. Just like shade without light, you ain’t got one without the other.
‘Course, good old Sammy’s been punishing us ever since for that one.
Gnostics also think Good God tried to run around Bad God with Jesus Christ. But we fixed Him. Killed him and turned him into a church run by sickos.
However, since I’m entirely inconsistent most of the time, I daily try to say my Buddhist chant, nam myoho renge kyo. Which I purchased for 5 dollars in San Francisco in 1966.
“I hear you saying that on the shitter a lot.”
Now, before we go into that, I have to say I find the Cosmic Order or the Universe or the Big It to be aware, with a hell of a sense of humor.
It communicates with itself along channels we do not know. But do have scientific proof of. I believe it was the Bell experiment, run with colliders. See, there’s a disagreement between Einsteinian Physics and Heisenberg Physics. Einstein says, “nothing can be known outside of locality.” Locality being if an event happens, the carrier wave that takes that data away cannot get further than the speed of light times time duration.
Heisenberg Particle Physics says that information is available to the Universe immediately, on the other side of the Universe.
Now, I’m not smart enough to know these things. But apparently, once electrons are paired, however that is done, they remain paired. Unlike many Catholics.
So the Bell experiment tested this. They separated paired electrons, probably using divorce lawyers, smashed the shit outta one of them with really big hammers.
And reversed its spin. Whereupon the separated hostage electron really far away immediately reversed its spin. Ergo, the Universe has some way of communicating with itself that is faster than light. Much faster than light. The implications of this are astounding. The Universe knows what’s going down.
Now, to get back to what I believe, before I knew any of this stuff, I found I could talk to Reality. Sometimes it would answer. Frequently it would play jokes on me. And it seemed to appreciate when I laughed.
“You’re some kinda funky holy man.”
Yeah, I got holes all over. Also, my own life would cause me to question my incredible string of luck and adventures. I shouldn’t be alive, and if I should have been, I definitely shouldn’t be here having this much fun.
So, to get back to Science. The Heisenbergian Universe - everything is true simultaneously all the time. You have your famous experiment with Schroedinger’s Cat in the Cat box. You seal him in a box with a vial of poison and a decaying atom. The atom decays at a known rate but you have no idea where the decayed particle will go. If it hits the glass vial of poison, you have Dead Cat.
Heisenberg says until you open the box, the cat is a) alive and b) dead and c) at every other possible point in between. It’s not until you ask the box, “is the cat dead or not?” that Reality collapses all the realities that are into one specific result to answer your question.
“Freaky.”
Another good example of this that they’ve done: a star blows up really far away. The light heads for Earth. Now, I don’t know the intricacies of this, but light is both waves and particles. Totally different constructs; they act different. So, if you choose to ask a question about this light using particle measuring equipment, you get one answer. If you choose to ask the same light the same question using wave measuring equipment, you get a different answer. It takes millions of years for that light to get here, so certainly your question isn’t going to cause something millions of years ago to do one thing or another. So both things are true simultaneously. Your question forces reality to collapse to A or B. Now, this is all very very crudely put. I’m not a scientist and I’m not really a philosopher. I’m more a class clown. But everything I’ve said so far can be checked and verified by the unafraid.
So, I started off praying to God, then I turned Atheist. Then I turned hippie-dippy flakey. And then I more or less turned into a Flow surfer.
Forgetting all that for a second, every single thing you do, every action, every thought process, can be done better or worse. You might say more efficiently or less efficiently, or more or less grace, or more or less correlation to whatever Is. The possibilities are endless. So if you do things Better, you’re gonna fight less head wind from the cosmic Flow. If you do things Worse, you’re gonna create more turbulence for yourself and maybe others. So there may not be an ultimate cosmic Right or Wrong, but there is a Better or Worse way to Be, that will cause you more or less pain. So to get back to Heisenberg, what you get from Reality depends on what you ask for. What you See rests upon what you Expect.
I’ve found that my Own Personal Universe has a tremendous sense of humor. And it won’t hurt you unless it has to. It’s not vicious. I add that last sentence because essentially, the universe is indifferent. So it’s a good thing you’re getting this down in case Morocco succeeds in crushing me.
A lot of people have said this basic stuff a lotta ways, from greeting card to serious. The power of positive thinking, do as you would be done, don’t do as you have been done. Buddha and Confucious and the Sufis had it down pretty good. But I don’t think anybody’s fucked it up worse than the Bush fundamentalist Christians.
What you have inside your head–how you are or how you’re taught–affects how you see, what you see and what you do about it. There could be a totally neutral Thing. So you got bad eyes, hateful mind, wicked heart… you’re gonna see a threat. You’re gonna do bad things, stupid things. So you’re gonna turn this neutral object into an Object of Evil fulfilling your own expectations.
If you have a good heart, a decent mind, honest eyes, you’ll see it as neutral or perhaps even as something positive. You won’t see bad so you won’t do bad so you won’t cause bad. Of course there’re limits on everything. Just cuz you see a bus coming at you as a fudge sundae don’t mean it ain’t gonna squish ya flat.
“I see it as the potential for individuals to reach some type of constructive Being by being together in a healthy way.”
You create your own reality. You are responsible for your own reality. As I said once before, if your corner of reality is a shit hole, you’re the feces.
“What does that mean about our situation in Essaouira?”
We’ve cleaned up this shit hole. And if by some sick trick reincarnation is true, the owner of this place is gonna pay down the line. We’ve already been rewarded - we’ve brightened the corner where we are. We’ve become more happy, less miserable as a result. You don’t like something, don’t whine. Do something about it.
But if something’s wrong, don’t keep quiet just because you don’t think anything can be done. If enough speak, evil listens. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin proved that about slavery. Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring defeated–sort of–DDT.
Saw a movie called Virus once. Pretty good sci-fi horror. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Sutherland. Energy being came along, saw what man had done, studied history, saw the Middle East was once a gorgeous forest but we came along, ate everything, killed everything, poisoned the rest… decided Mankind was a virus, a cancer. Decided to save the Earth by wiping us out.
I have to say, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, I was rooting for the virus killer. And even tho it’s too late now to save the earth, even if we tried, which we ain’t gonna, it still comes down to how long we can keep our nest livable. And how miserable we’ll be during this time. Do good, last longer, suffer less. Makes no difference to Mother Earth, cuz after we’re gone, she’ll rest a while and seed a new garden.
We’ve turned the Garden of Even into the Valley of Odd. So if we’re wiped out, fair is fair.
“My death doesn’t really matter to me. But the idea of mass death is horrifying.”
I don’t much care about either, mine or mass. The only sadness I have would be your missing me. And we’ve had a close and good enough time, you have part of me always. We already have more in a short time than most get forever.
“I know I’m satisfied. I finally have love, faith. I discover another universe in you.”
I’m never satisfied. I can always do more; I can always be better. Like Camus says, ‘the sentence starts the day you’re born; it ends the day you die.’ See, I’m committing one of his sins. I still hope for inner peace, to live up to myself, to do it right. And hope is one of his sins, because there is no hope. There’s only living this life as aware as you can, as full as you can, in as many aspects as you can. I got that part down fine. If I could just get rid of the fucking Hope.
“Well, that’s back to your question again.”
What question?
“The question you ask determines what you receive.”
Well, I have a right to be hopeful. There’s no way I should be alive or have had such a wonderful life along the way. I got more stories than anybody. My first motorcycle ride I left the road at 100 mph and didn’t get hurt. Fell off a cliff when I was seven. Jumped off rooftops when I was four. Fell out of trees, rolled my car in my own driveway… I’ve shot up for 30 years, I’ve overdosed, I drank myself to death, ran from the cops 10 times, got away 9, two armed robberies… yet I’ve had wonderful friends, accolades, art shows, poetry readings. And the best friend and wife in the world.
“Aww…”
I hope for the best; I look for the worst. And I found in situations where there’s no time to think I do everything I can to stay alive. Yet I would not keep my life if I had to dishonor myself with another’s death unless the asshole were attacking me.
“Your philosophy actually helps me, you know that?”
This is the Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering. Maybe there’s a reason you feel helped.
LADY K
If Eve hadn’t given Adam that apple
I wouldn’t be smoking today.
Even so,
I tried to serve Sky God
but was drawn to that old Debbil Weed.
I became a happy pappy
papa puff daddy
gadfly to gladly
nouveau bohemian in old school crowd.
Sir Laugh-a-Lot of Pot-a-Lot
Queen MaryJaned
Lady Day to Lady K
Kafka to a kiss
S B Smith & Lady K
* * *
Smith sez if we drive away all our readers, we can shut this thing down, crawl into our holes, and lick our hashish.